


Postmortem

by kurushi



Category: Beetlejuice (1988)
Genre: Death, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Ghosts, Haunted Houses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 21:55:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5107082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurushi/pseuds/kurushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After her divorce, Lydia plans to return to Winter River and two of her favorite ghosts. A stop at an abandoned house, and now she's stuck haunting a piece of real estate in the middle of nowhere with a porch that hasn't got proper planning approval, and taking whatever company she can get. Even if that means him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Postmortem

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note: I listened to Garbage and The Pixies while I wrote this. I have no regrets. As an Australian writing about what feels like a very American house and two very American characters, I hope I pulled it off all right.

Lydia's father and Delia 'retired' back to NYC. They joked that living in a house with ghosts made them feel like they had one foot in the grave, but the real truth of the matter was that all of their friends were also retiring, and it was suddenly okay to spend all day doing more or less nothing, even in the city.

So the big house sat empty, with Adam and Barbara taking care of things, as the grass outside slowly grew taller and turned brown.

There wasn't any grass, where Lydia lived. Just concrete. Inner city. She sat in her living room in California, next to the window, looking down at her divorce papers. Gary wanted the apartment. Well, he could have it. She didn't want the view or the smell of the city anymore. She could imagine dying in that room, and spending the next century or so looking out the window. Watching the flies gather near the bins in summer as the dump truck groaned and heaved its way up the street.

She signed the papers, packed her things, and took the car.

The journey melted into a long series of roads, truck stops, petrol pumps, and diners. Cheap motels with scratchy sheets. It was worse than the tedium of being married to somebody who didn't understand you. It felt longer than summer vacation had felt, when she was eight years old and ten minutes was _forever_.

Maybe that was why she pulled over to look at the old house. Abandoned, the ceiling was slowly rotting. Paint peeled in layers off the wood panelling on the porch. A screen door swung and screeched as the wind blew through the empty front hall, banging and shuddering every time it flung itself back against the doorframe.

Lydia sat in her car, letting the sight sink into her bones. She found herself reaching into the back seat, into a box. Pulling out the camera, which she hadn't touched in a couple of years. It was like muscle memory, riding a bike. Check the film. Clean the lens. Hold it up, shoot.

Her first shot caught the sunshield flap above her head, and the driver's side rearview mirror, not to mention the frame of the car. She took the key out, pushed open the door, and locked everything up behind herself. She felt like her heartbeat was starting up again. Yes, this. This was what made her live.

Memento mori. The little signs and signals of entropy and chaos. The promise that the buildings and lives that feel so static, are honestly quite active. When there's nobody there to take action, paint peels. Rubber washer rings crack, and taps drip. Gardens spill over their beds, and birds nest in the chimney. Gravestones fade, and the small universes that their skulls contained just crumble into dust. They're forgotten by the living, or at least by the vast majority.

Maybe it was thinking about that, imagining Adam and Barbara in the house on the hill, and how Lydia would ignore her sore knee and her wrinkling skin, and push a lawn mower across the grass until it was all short and tidy again. She looked older than they did, now, at forty-three. Her family home had ghosts who were remembered, which made Lydia wonder. What was it like inside this house? Was somebody haunting it? Was there any furniture left?

She caught the rusted screen door before it slammed back against the house. She squinted into the darkness, and stepped inside.

The things that she didn't think about, were the most important. She'd always gone deep first, and then dealt with the basics later. It often led to terrible choices, more often than not involving men.

She didn't think about asbestos, and whether or not it was safe to breathe in the big whiff of dust that flew up, when she tugged on the curtains in the parlour. She didn't think about support beams, as she walked across a creaking floor to the foot of the wooden stairs.

She didn't think about cobwebs, as she opened the upstairs bathroom door, and she didn't think about the puddle on the floor, because she was entranced by the patterns of rust in the cracks in the mirror, and how the fuzzy spots and flaws spread underneath, even as milky mildew and dust spread above the glass.

She took a few shots, up close, and then she backed up to get a better angle, without looking away from the viewfinder. Her left heel caught on an uneven tile. Her right foot slipped in the puddle. She fell, and her camera was flung upwards from inertia, and then pulled back down with the help of gravity and the shoulder-strap. She saw it fall down towards her, and then everything went white with the flash.

She was in the bathroom, and her jeans were soaked through, ugh. Her camera's lens was broken, and it was so late in the day that the sun spread golden light on the bathroom wallpaper, and grey dim gloom everywhere else.

She pulled herself up slowly, something she was learning to do in middle-age. Skin, bones, you name it, it didn't bounce back as quick as it used to. She swore under her breath, and made her way downstairs.

The wind had died, and the screen door hung open, casting a long shadow down the porch steps, towards her car. Lydia shouldered her broken camera, and held a hand out in case the door slammed back in towards her, but it didn't. Because she was standing ankle-deep in sand, and looking out at a strange sky. In the distance, she could hear a rumbling slither that shook the sand, making it shiver and re-settle. Her ankles itched. Her ears pricked. Sandworms. Saturn. Ian had told her all about it when she was younger.

“Well, shit,” she said, and she backed up in a hurry. There she was, back in the front hall, looking out at the porch. She was dead, and she knew it. What a crap way to go.

“Oh, _come on_ , I don't even get to sit on the porch? The Maitlands got a porch! What kind of a joke is this?!”

She found the _Handbook for the Recently Deceased_ in the kitchen, slipped neatly into a drawer alongside a twisted old bottle-opener and a cracked wooden spoon. She cleaned the grime off of the counter, and sat on it. Flicking through, not much had changed since the eighties. Territorial boundaries. Duration of the haunt. Help vouchers, and how to use them up. What to do if breathers infested your haunt (Hint: haunt them). What to do if breathers knocked down your haunt (Hint: haunt them, or call in some help to get re-assigned. Or, haunt the pile of dirt that's left behind.)

Nothing that you really couldn't figure out for yourself, in other words. Lydia shrugged. She wasn't going to waste her help vouchers so early, especially when the only thing she really had to do was sit tight and wait for something to happen.

It was probably the middle of the night, when she had her great idea. She tore off some wallpaper, sharpened the end of the wooden spoon, lit a fire, burned it black, and scratched out a message in charcoal.

_Dear Dad and Delia,_  
Give Barbara and Adam my love, and tell them they can come visit me here when their lease is up.  
Love from Lydia. 

The next trick, was to plant the letter on her body somehow. She spent a while there in the end. She straightened her bangs out, and pulled her leg out of the puddle so it wouldn't go moldy. She checked the ceiling for any holes, and hid the note in her jeans pocket. Last of all, since she'd always wanted to have a dramatic epitaph, she raised her corpse's arms up to her shoulders, and clasped her cold, dead hands around the camera.

Let them think that she'd seen something scary, or astounding, and that the shock had killed her. She didn't want them to think that she'd committed accidental suicide by falling Nikon. At least, not before the autopsy. She hoped there would be an autopsy. Maybe she could get Delia to get a copy of the pictures for her.

Barbara and Adam had reacted to their afterlives as ghosts, by getting grumpy with the Deetz redecorations, and then by wallpapering and renovating. Lydia wasn't that into homemaking. She fiddled with the things in each room. She checked out the spiders in the basement, and the spiders in the attic, and spent a few hours comparing to see if they were related, or if there were two different families. Time passed.

She thought about all of her favourite things in the car, which would probably be returned to Gary when she was discovered. He'd probably sell anything of value, give her clothes to Goodwill. She didn't like that idea. So as she leaned against the door frame and kicked the swinging screen door outwards so she had a clear view of the yard, and then she whispered one name three times under her breath.

“Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse.”

The first and only other time she'd summoned him, he'd been miniature and dragging his corpse around Adam's scale model of their small country town. He hadn't appeared from nowhere, so much as burst out onto the 1:1 full-scale scene. It had been near instantaneous, and the rest of the evening had gone by just as quickly. Your life really did flash by you, when you were being frogmarched down the aisle by an evil ghost. Well, maybe evil was a bit much, even for him. But dangerously self-interested, cruel and careless. All she'd really registered was her own fear, that night. It had all happened so fast.

This time, things happened slowly. Lydia watched the sun set beyond the porch, and her car. She watched cars driving past down on the highway. She listened to the frogs down in a patch of trees, that must have some kind of creek hidden in the green undergrowth.

“Maybe I should just get used to being alone,” it was high time to start talking to herself, if better company wasn't going to show up.

“Well if you didn't want to see anyone, why the hell'd you call on me?”

Lydia jumped, and gasped, and got spooked, which was a very un-ghostly thing to do. When she turned around, Betelgeuse was leaning on the wall inside the door. He lost a good minute and a half to laughing his ass off at her, which she used to kick the toes of his boots, and take a look at him.

When she'd last met him, she'd been a young girl and he'd seemed old, moldy, fat, and nasty. A stereotypical pervert uncle, the kind that made everyone around him feel slimy and gross, just from being there. Looking at him as an adult woman, things were different. Gary was a lot softer around the edges than Betelgeuse was. As a ghost herself, she could hardly complain about a little decay. Who was she to judge? He didn't look that bad, for a corpse. She'd seen worse over the years, with some of Adam and Barbara's friends.

Most of all, confined to this house, he was her only company. And her only hope of getting her hands on some dry socks.

“You'd better bring my stuff in from the car, and hide it. Or when they find the body, they'll take the cigarettes.”

He blinked. “Been long?”

She shrugged. “A few days, I think. I lost track of things trying to repair my camera by glaring at it.”

“I call dibs on the porn.”

He brushed past her, intent on looting her remaining belongings. She was surprised he hadn't jumped down her throat about the wedding, or tried to make a pass at her. But in her defence, she had known him for all of twenty minutes, tops, including the time he'd just spent watching her in silence. She actually had no idea how he behaved towards other people – the living, or ghosts that he wasn't trying to fleece. She watched him messing up her stuff with a frown, feet itching to take her over there and hands tensing. If she took one more step, she'd be on Saturn. Fuck.

“Don't know why the bitch couldn't do this herself,” he muttered loudly to himself.

She clenched her hands into fists. She would if she could, damnit!

She thought that the attic was a good idea, but Betelgeuse insisted on the basement. As he shoved her toiletries bag up a rickety laundry chute, he clicked his tongue against his teeth. “It's like this. First place that emergency services - or your dearly beloved - will check for cash and shiny things is in the places that are nice and clean. Nobody in their right mind would wade through this.”

He waved a hand at the muck that swam around his ankles. Lydia watched the dirty water lap up against the white and black stripes of his trousers.

“Like you,” she said. “I'm glad I have someone out of their mind, then. That makes me feel so secure here. You're a real dependable type.” Though he was, actually. He'd brought her stuff in without really messing any of it up. He had taken to one of her scarves, and had stuffed it into his breast pocket. The cigarettes had gone into a trouser pocket. He'd been pretty careful with the rest of it, barely even splashing it as he'd waded through the muck.

“Hey, I'm nobody's mook! I'm in this for the smokes, babe.”

She sighed. “Give me at least one. Call it a death-day present?”

He snorted. It was a wet, ugly sound. More spite than amusement. “Bit late for that, isn't it, sweet-cheeks. Hey, what's your name? I mean, I can call you Honey-pie, but it helps, to know. Do you have a name?”

“I... do,” so he hadn't recognised her. “But I don't see why I should tell you.”

He glared at her. Came up real close, so close she couldn't tell where the stench from the standing water ended, and the stench from his breath began. “Come now, come now. Play nice, lady. You know my name. It's only fair and square that I know yours. Otherwise it makes this whole thing a bit one-sided, if you catch my drift.”

Lydia curled her lip, and shoved him away. He fell back into the water, spluttering and gasping.

“You've got them wet!” He held up the sodden packet of cigarettes.

“Guess,” she said, and that was the end of that. She stalked off up the stairs, to go hang out with her body. It was bloating up, didn't look so much like her, anymore. She poked it with the toe of her shoe, and sighed.

He kept banging around downstairs, and her corpse kept on not looking like her, not like a place she belonged. She had used to belong in there. She thought about how rubbery and changeable Barbara and Adam's faces were, and wondered if she could make herself look like her body, right now. Or whether that particular shade of lifelessness would require a very thick foundation layer.

“Hey!”

She looked up, but it was just Betelgeuse, downstairs. She ignored him, and clasped her hands together over her stomach. She leaned back against the wall and crossed her legs at the ankles. She fiddled idly with the ring on her finger, and watched a spider wander across the floor to check out her corpse's fingernails.

Footsteps thundered up the stairs, and the spider froze. It skittered onto the camera, then underneath, so that it was hiding in the shadows under her jawline.

“Hey, I said!” He grabbed Lydia's arm, and she turned her head slowly to stare at him.

“What,” she said. It wasn't a question.

“You're wearing a ring,” he said distractedly. He reached a hand out towards her.

“That's not what you came up here to say.” She crossed her arms, hiding her finger. She stared down at her corpse. She hadn't been wearing a ring when she'd died, because she'd left it with Gary when she'd left him. She hadn't picked anything up, that she could remember. But there was a gold band on her ring finger. She'd been trying not to think too much about it. She wasn't even sure when she'd noticed it was there.

“They're here,” he said. His eyes widened, and he grinned to show rotten, crooked teeth.

He reached out to grab her hand, and ring forgotten, he dragged her along the landing so that they could peer out. Morning had risen as she'd been thinking and a marked police station wagon had pulled up alongside her car. One officer shaded his eyes to look up at the house, while the other lifted his radio.

“We've found her, cap'n! Off the starboard bow, one bloated whale. Man the harpoons!” Betelgeuse made a honking sound, Lydia supposed that was meant to be a foghorn, but it wasn't anywhere close.

So her corpse was bloated! Whose wasn't? She had almost been interested in the proceedings, but the thought of hanging around Betelgeuse when he was like this, didn't really appeal. She pulled away.

“I could put you away,” she said. “I only called you here to help me move my stuff, and you've taken what you wanted. We're square.”

She felt herself sweat underneath the wedding band on her finger. She pinched her fingers together and pulled slowly, escaping his grip on her hand.

“Hey, now. Hey now. We were just getting started with our fun!”

She ignored him, and walked off to find a nice room to brood in. But as she heard the police making their way cautiously up the stairs, she was drawn back out. She wondered what they'd make of her corpse. She wondered, if they poked it, if it would ooze or leak anything filthy.

Betelgeuse was sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bath. He had a cardboard popcorn carton, that was filled with creeping, crawling bugs. Where he'd dug those up from, she had no idea. He patted the toilet beside him, and it looked like the best place to sit, sure. Maybe he'd even been saving it for her. A real throne for a princess. Yeesh. She brushed past the police, making them shiver, and stood beside the sink. She looked down at her decayed and empty shell.

There were two cops. A woman and a man. The man pulled a radio out. “Okay, we've got our missing person right here. Family might have trouble ID-ing her, but I think there's a wallet in her pocket.”

“Hey, now, I know I've seen that camera before...” Betelgeuse cupped his chin thoughtfully. “Been a while.” He pulled a sodden cigarette out of the soggy packet, and sucked on it until the end started smoking.

“I don't think so,” Lydia said. “I think that camera would recognise you, if you'd met it before.”

“Hmmmm. I smell bullshit, dearie.” He screwed his nose up, like he really could smell anything over his own rampant odors.

The policewoman knelt down beside Lydia. “Jeeze, what a way to go. I wonder if she got a picture of it? I mean, that kind of thing would sell for thousands.”

Lydia could see it coming, but she couldn't do anything to stop it. She didn't flinch or hide away from it. She'd learned how to face a crowd; she'd had to. Her gallery openings were way too popular, her prints were too well known.

“The final picture ever taken by Lydia Deetz.”

Keeping her maiden name had been one of the many sources of arguments, between her and Gary. But she had a career, and she hadn't been willing to risk that, just for his ego. He'd accepted it in the end, like all the compromises she'd asked him to make for her. Somehow, that still hadn't been enough.

“Aha!” Betelgeuse snapped his fingers. “That little brat that I married, right before I got eaten! Rough week, that was.”

Lydia felt like her eyes were about to pop out of their sockets. Reflexively, she reminded herself that wasn't possible. Then, she recalled that she was a ghost, and it probably was. She'd need to practice in front of the mirror, to find out exactly what that did feel like. Otherwise, how would she know? Could your eyes pop out by accident, or did you have to actually force them out?

“I promise you, it was worse for me.” So very much worse, he had no idea.

He seemed taken aback. “What? Oh, right. Right. You nearly lost your dearly departed. Wellp, glad I was around then, to sort things out for you.”

He brushed his hands together, and shoved them into his trouser pockets, pushing his gut forwards like he was proud of it.

Not that it looked bad. On a man with you know, actual blood in his veins, she'd call it cuddly. Not a word you'd associate with Betelgeuse, though.

“So, er, whaddya say we head on up to the master bedroom and test the springs, eh?” He pulled his hands out, only to smooth his hair back. A dislodged scrap of... was that moss? Lichen? Whatever it was, it fell to the floor.

“It'd good to see you haven't changed. Neither have my feelings about it all.”

He reached forwards to clasp her left hand between his own. She recoiled, but he didn't feel wet, or clammy. Just dry and a bit cool. She could have sworn he'd been a literal slime bucket, when he'd slapped his hand over her mouth at their wedding.

“Lydia. Darling. Dearest. You've changed so much, and it's such a good thing, too.”

Her lips were dry. She resisted the urge to lick them.

“I mean, I was expecting you to be different. But then, I wasn't expecting to see your precious face for another what, forty odd years! You're practically a spring chick, here.”

There was something there, in what he'd said. Lydia felt her hand go limp, his fingers caress the back of her hand, as she tried to process.

“I mean, hey, not that I'm complaining. This age suits you. I'm a man of varied tastes, and yes, it would've been great to see you with all of the wrinkles and scars that life could give you, but I'm happy to settle for full, round-”

“You knew the marriage was valid,” Lydia realised. “That when I died and became a ghost, I'd have your ring on my finger!”

He grinned, and a bug leg twitched between his teeth. “Got it in one, babes!”

“Ugh.” Lydia could twist it around, but she couldn't pull it over her knuckle. “I only just got rid of the last one.”

He came up close, so close that his side pressed up against hers. “Wait, you threw it out?! Do you know how deep I had to dig, to get that thing in the first place?!”

Lydia stepped away, because he felt soft and warm against her side, and it was a dangerous thing to get used to.

“No. Not your ring. I think that got swallowed by the sandworm.”

He snapped his fingers. “Awful, just awful. Ruining our wedding like that. Well, let me tell you. Babs isn't invited to our housewarming.”

“Of course she isn't. She's got at least another ninety years in Winter River, for one.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Of course, of course. How could something like that slip my mind?”

What a sarcastic, insincere, facetious asshole! Well, she'd put him straight, for starters. “And what makes you think you're moving in with me, hmm?”

He laughed, shrugged, waggled his eyebrows. “Well, I'm your husband, and you're my wife... You do the math. I hear you got straight As, so there's no excuse for errors here, now.”

“Actually, from my experience, getting married kills your sex life.” Gary, who was always busy. Gary who didn't like a good, hard fuck. Gary who had wanted children.

Betelgeuse put a hand over his heart. He staggered, and groped about to grab hold of the sink. “You! You... you bigamist!” He buried his face in his hands and pretended to sob, peeking out from between his fingers every now and then to see if she was watching.

“I don't think that what I did with you counts,” Lydia said with a wry smile. But the ring on her finger felt heavy and real. “Well, I didn't think it would count, when I did it. If I had known, it might have saved me a decade of disappointment.”

He pulled his hands away from his face slowly, a dazzling grin stretching his moldy features into something that was, actually, very nearly attractive. “You left him! For me!”

“No. I left him for me.” Lydia had had enough of watching the cops watch her corpse. She headed back down the stairs, planning on seeing if the living room had any books in it.

Betelgeuse followed her, a niggling voice right behind her.

“Right! Because you wanted the very best, and there's only one place you can get that. I'm here for you, babes.”

“No. I left Gary because I wanted a better sex life. Hell, any sex life.”

“Right, with me! Let me tell you, I've got you covered! Any position, any orifice, any appendage, I can service you!”

Lydia slammed the door to the living room shut behind herself, and threw herself down into the sofa. A cloud of dust enveloped her, and when it cleared, Betelgeuse was kneeling in front of her.

“Well, let me put it this way, sweetums. You're stuck in this here house for the next hundred odd years. Don't nobody know you're here but me. Now unless you want to waste one of your help vouchers asking your case worker to find you a travelling orgy, there's one candidate for the job left on this earth.”

There were two ideas that flashed in Lydia's mind simultaneously. The first was that Betelgeuse had waited for her. That he maybe actually liked her. The other was, over my dead body. Which was conveniently upstairs, if she really wanted.

She giggled.

“What? Come on now, you can't just laugh at me in your head. Babes. Lyds. Honeybutt. Share.”

He was plaintive and whining, like he thought that was going to get him anywhere.

“I could always just call out random names, until I hit the booty call jackpot. Nathan, Nathan, Naaaaathan! I'm sure you're not the only ghost who can be called that way!” she was teasing him, mostly because his overreactions were a pleasant distraction from her own thoughts.

“Aww, come on! I'm not that bad, am I?” He sniffed his own armpits. “All right, maybe I am. But I could bathe, I swear! You just gotta promise to put out, first. I don't hold with soap for no reason. It's against my culture. I go waaay back, y'see.”

“Sure,” Lydia said, not believing a word of it.

Outside, a truck put its brakes on. They turned as one to the front windows, to watch the forensic recovery team snap on their blue neoprene gloves and shoulder their kit bags.

“D'ya think they'll cut you up in here?” Betelgeuse leaned forwards, a wicked grin on his face. “I can screw with them, if you want.”

“No,” Lydia yanked the curtains shut. “I'm going to watch. You can come if you promise to keep quiet.”

He raised a hand and zipped his lips shut – literally.

“I've seen that trick before, and I know just how useful that isn't. You're not fooling me.” But she let him follow her, and they both stood in the bathtub as they watched the forensics team work.

They checked over surfaces for fingerprints, dusting and lifting Lydia's own prints from a few surfaces. They photographed everything, placing scale cards down as a reference. Finally, they handled her corpse the way you'd handle a sleeping child. It looked a lot more caring than she'd imagined it would. Fuck, she wasn't made of glass!

“Is it the joints? Do dead bodies break apart this quickly?”

Betelgeuse cupped his chin in his hand, elbow braced against the soap dish in the shower wall. “I think it's cos they don't get that many deaths outside of hospitals in this area. Big cities, they just gotta keep things moving, yanno? They have more experience with dead meat.”

“Gee, thanks. What am I, chopped liver?” She gave him a scathing look from under her brows, and turned back to watch them.

“Give it time, babes. Like, ten hours, tops.”

“You reckon? I'd have thought the coroner would be really busy.”

He shrugged. “Been a slow month for newcomers.”

She turned to him. “You mean, in the Obituaries?”

Adam had picked up a subscription to _The Afterlife_. It had been an interesting read, until Juno and Lydia's Dad had both declared it banned from her living eyes.

“Got to get my kicks somewhere, locked in my coffin until somebody comes knocking, right?”

Lydia smiled without sympathy. “You've been in there this whole time?”

He waved his head, made an entirely unconvincing shrug. “We-ell, I come and I go. It's like lace-up boots, or black eyeliner. Sometimes it's in fashion.”

“You piss people off,” she concluded for him. “And Juno puts you back in.”

He grinned, which she took for agreement.

He sometimes tried to make small conversation, as they picked through the mostly empty, rotten boxes in the attic. “So, uh, seen any good flicks lately?”

“I don't get out much,” she said dryly. “You?”

“Uh... _Saw_ was pretty good. Bit of a laugh.”

She sighed. “Even I've been to the movies in the last ten years.”

He pressed on. “So, was that how he seduced you away from me? Date night?”

She rolled her eyes. “I've been married for more than ten years, you idiot. Was. I was married for more than ten years.”

“Yeah, to _me_. And you cheated.”

She shrugged. “I guess that's how it works out. Gary cheats on me, I cheat on you. Though at least I didn't _know_ I was married.” 

His lip curled in disgust. “ _Gary_. What a fucking name. Who cheats on a wife?! Lowest of the low.”

She was honestly surprised to hear that, coming from his mouth. “You've been faithful to me?”

He took her hands between his. “Yeah! I mean, fuck, always knew you'd turn into a real hottie.”

She watched his face for any signs of deceit. He looked way too honest to be believed.

“I mean, emotionally faithful. I mean, sometimes you're somewhere, and there's a girl, and it's hard to tell when you stop flirting and start, you know, right?”

“Right. Well, at least that's less creepy than you holding a candle for a teenage girl all these years. Anyway, why is the ring still on me? I thought wedding vows were _till death we part_?”

“Er? Don't recall that bit. Anyway, the contract still holds, whatever else is going on there.”

Lydia didn't like it at all. “If we were married, weren't you supposed to be free? But I could call your name, and you came.”

“Not yet, sweetheart.”

He came up so close beside her, her hair curled from the reek of his breath. She used her elbow to shove him away.

“I mean it! The only reason you helped me save Barbara and Adam was for the freedom that marrying me would give you. If this ring is on my finger...” she tugged to show that it wouldn't budge, “then _why_ haven't you done anything with it yet?”

He shrugged. “The chief injustice didn't know if it had stuck, so to speak. Had to wait till you passed to find out. And I'm not talking about gas here.”

“Like anyone would have thought you were!” She threw her hands up. “I can't talk to you! Forget I ever cared!”

She stormed upstairs, and slammed the door to the master bedroom shut behind herself. She locked it, and didn't leave the room or answer him for a week. He stopped knocking and calling for her after the third day. From then on, she sat at the window and watched the world outside. She'd never really cared much for the outdoors, beyond the quality of the natural light and the perfect shot. But she could see and hear and even smell the grass growing, the trees basking in the sunlight, the stinking emissions of the cars from the highway. The screech and whine of insects in the early evening. She'd never wanted to just go for a walk as much as she did sitting at that window, all alone.

On the fifth day, a real estate agent drove up and hammered a “SOLD” sign into the ground. On the eighth day, a car drove up, and Delia Deetz stepped out onto the dirt drive with a wince. Lydia's Dad shut the car off, and swung the car door shut behind himself with a heavy thwack.

“Sweetie?” He called out, eyes searching the house. “Are you here?”

“Oh don't be so obvious, Charles. We had a hard enough time getting her outdoors when she was alive. You seriously think she'll be anywhere near the windows? Anyway, you know she'll be trapped within the threshold, wherever that is.”

Lydia's Dad sighed, and rubbed his forehead. But he led the way to the front door, a set of keys jangling in his hands.

“Fat lot of good they'll do him, there isn't a lock left in this place that isn't busted.”

Lydia swatted behind her head, hand brushing past a wispy frizz of hair and connecting with a nose.

“Ow,” he said, voice muffled behind his own hands.

She stood and faced him, in all his cringing, pained glory. “Serves you right for showing up where you're not welcome. _Don't_ let them know you're here.”

He straightened up, looked straight into her eyes. “You're not banishing me?”

“Yet,” she said, as a warning. “I'm not banishing you _yet_.”

If there was a time you could forget your age and run rushing into your parents' arms, it had to be following an untimely and tragic death. Lydia took the stairs so fast she wasn't sure she even set foot on them. She collided into her father with an “Oof” that belied her non-corporeal state. She closed her eyes and breathed in how familiar he felt, as she felt Delia pat her on the back with an awkward hand.

Delia had never really gotten into the parenting thing. But she cared, which helped. Lydia'd had a great drunk talk with Delia, once. Sharing horror over the thought of childbirth, of that kind of responsibility.

“Well, I can see that we're going to spend a small fortune fixing _this_ place up!”

Lydia looked around. She barely saw the mildew any more, but she had to admit, some electricity and proper furniture wouldn't go awry.

“Delia, sweetie. What did we agree about interior decorating?”

Delia flung her wonky chequerboard scarf around her neck, and surveyed the hall, staking on sharp heels towards the kitchen. “I didn't say I'd be picking the colours, _darling_.”

Her Dad chuckled, and squeezed Lydia tightly. “Well, I'm sure that black will be a strong feature. Sweetie, how was it? They said it was a blow to the head, were you in pain?”

Lydia shrugged. “It happened fast enough, I don't really know.” She looked up the stairs, to find Betelgeuse spying down at them. “Sometimes I get headaches,” she raised her voice, “but they _go away_ quickly enough.”

Her father smiled, and ruffled her hair. She ducked away, and flattened it back down.

“Glad to hear it, glad to hear it. I mean, at least you got a house! Adam was telling me just the other day...”

“Honey, it's been _years_ since we visited Winter River,” Delia reminded him, trailing a finger through some of the dust and wrinkling her nose.

“Just the other year, Adam was telling me, property's quite hard to come by in the afterlife. Not many houses are haunted, after all.”

“So I've heard,” Lydia could see his attention fading, his work-brain switching on.

“I mean, it's not a _great_ location, but it's not like you need to commute to work any more, or buy any groceries. You've got a great view, and I'm sure we can take care of the wood rot, get you set up with a phone line, power, internet.”

“Pump the basement,” Lydia added to his list of things. Why not? He'd obviously bought the place, wanted to fix it up for her. “Plant a no-water garden. Put locks on the gate.”

Delia took great interest in the pantry, and the windows that looked out across the countryside from the second floor. “Why Charles, we could fix this place up and die here, and haunt it as a family, all together!”

“Or,” Lydia said, sharing a horrified glance with her father, “We could give the adult woman her personal privacy.”

“Er,” said her father.

“Seriously, you two _still_ make enough noise to wake the dead. I _don't_ need that ringing in my ears for the rest of forever.”

There wasn't much more to do. They'd only _just_ spoken on the phone, to talk about the divorce and her moving to Winter River. They'd caught up for lunch the week before that, when they'd been visiting L.A.. Delia stomped out slamming the screen door. “I'll be back within the week with some fabric samples, young lady!”

“I'm in my forties, Mom! I'm not a little girl anymore!”

Her Dad put a consoling hand on her shoulder, and said, “I'll send some contractors around to get some quotes. Try not to send them screaming.”

Lydia smirked. “No promises.”

“That's my girl,” he said, like he hadn't heard her. “And I'll get you a new camera.”

She watched them drive away, feeling a strange numbness creeping up her legs, rooting her to the spot. As their car receded on the highway, Betelgeuse came up behind her with loud footsteps, telegraphing his presence. She supposed that passed for manners from a ghost.

“What's crawled up your butt and died? I mean, apart from being treated like a child.”

“My camera,” Lydia said, thoughtfully. “I brought a complete copy of my clothing with me when I died, but not my camera. I didn't really think about it, replacing it. Taking pictures here. What am I going to do, document renovations?”

“Ahh, loss of self.” He cracked his neck. “Well, I'll be upstairs. Let me know if you get over your death anytime in the next decade or so.”

He was at the first floor landing before she found herself spinning on her heels and chasing after him. She caught up to him halfway to the second floor. “Wait! What do you mean, decade?! You're staying?”

“Hey, babe, like I said, we're married.”

Lydia didn't think that made any difference. “And married people live apart from each other, all the time.”

He drew himself up, tall and intimidating. His arms loomed tense and raised at his sides. “Well I'm not _people_!”

Lydia had had about enough of him. “ _FINE_ ,” she screamed back at him. “Stay if you care! But _my_ family provided the property, so _your_ side can provide the smokes from now on!”

She stormed back downstairs, slamming doors behind herself as she made her way into the kitchen. She would have liked to wring his obnoxious fucking neck. But it wasn't him, not really. It was Gary and their seemingly eternal dry spell. Her parents, and that way they could just sink their controlling hands into every aspect of her existence, even her death, and always in ways that she couldn't refuse. It was losing her career and everything that she was.

She couldn't even make herself a coffee, because the kitchen held nothing but rust and strange moldy things in jars that had, big surprise, rusty lids.

She snapped her fingers, wondering if intention was all that mattered when it came to ghastly powers. Nope, no coffee. Wait, there it was! On the bench. In a comfortingly large, familiar mug. Just like one of the mugs Barbara used to make her hot chocolate in, back in Winter River, during late-night study sessions with Adam.

She reached out for it, a smile quirking up the corners of her mouth despite her mood, when she caught the quiet lead-in for a proper chuckle coming from behind her. She said “You,” darkly, without needing to check who it was.

“Oh come on, precious! You didn't think that you were _that_ special did you?”

She slammed a fist down on the bench, shaking the mug and sending ripples through the coffee. “Are you _trying_ to make me angry with you?”

He hopped into the air, and spun around her so they were face to face. “Well, you don't get your powers that quickly. It takes time. But as your new form is figuring it out, there's some energy fluctuations.”

“You're saying I've got pre-prestidigitation syndrome?”

He shrugged. Reached out for the mug, which she snatched close to her chest only just in time. “You aren't... looking out for me, are you?!” Perish the thought.

“I'm looking for something, babe. Got to release that tension somehow, right?”

As weird as it sounded, she didn't believe him for a second. He might be horny, sure, but he wasn't looking to screw her. He was totally a soft touch, somewhere under there. It made her insatiably curious about what his first days had been like after death. Whether he'd had anybody to keep him company, whether he'd had any guidance whatsoever. The _Handbook_ didn't look like it had been in print for six hundred years. What kind of literature had been around, back then?

For the sake of it, Lydia looked him up and down as she sipped her coffee. Bitter. Tepid. Somehow made it easier to accept, coming from him. “Well, it _has_ been a pretty long dry spell.”

“I'm glad you see my dilemma,” he said, wearing a pitiful expression.

“I meant for me, you ass!” She hit him in the shoulder gently with her half-empty mug. “It's actually one of the big reasons I asked for the divorce. How can you call that a marriage, when you don't look at each other, let alone touch!”

Betelgeuse pushed the mug aside, gently, and ran the back of his hand along the inside of her arm, right up to her shoulder, before cupping her cheek in his palm. “A woman after my own heart,” he said thickly. His throat bobbed. “Got to do this kind of thing properly.”

Oh crap, he was talking about the ring on her finger. Whatever the laws of death specified regarding the union of two souls. But her reaction felt more like an old reflex than anything else. Truly, she'd slept with worse looking men. She couldn't get any more dead from STDs than she already was. It really wasn't like she was spoiled for choice. And if it was terrible, she could always banish him before he came.

“I'm not fucking you in a pile of filth,” she said. “It'll have to wait until my parents buy us a bed.”

His eyes shone with triumph. “ _Us_ ,” he said, with fervor. And then, “Hey! What the hell's wrong with a little filth?!”

She sniffed pointedly at his shirt collar. “There's enough grave dirt under your fingernails _alone_ to cover us for that. Plus, I thought you'd like getting clean sheets dirty. Making your mark.”

He grinned, showing a row of crooked, stained teeth. He chuckled low and deep in his belly, clasping her shoulders. One of his ragged fingernails caught momentarily on her shirt.

“Get white ones,” he said, eyes on her lips. “Wanna see every face you make, how you'll writhe in horror under me.”

“Gee, how appealing,” Lydia replied deadpan, but to be honest she was glad he wasn't holding any delusions about the effect of his personal hygiene on her.

“Ahh, you'll get used to it. We're all falling apart, we're non-corporeal corpses!” He spread his arms wide as if to encompass the entire world of the walking dead.

“Well, I'm sure some of the dead can operate a tap.” If they lived in houses where the taps hadn't rusted over completely, she thought, with a glance at the kitchen sink.

“So you'd like to tap, this, is that what you're saying?”

“Not in the way you'd like,” she replied.

He smiled, and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “That's not what you were saying five minutes ago...”

She backed up. “I was agreeing I didn't have much choice in the matter!”

But to be fair, she was wet just thinking about sex. She sometimes thought she'd have grown into a very different woman, if it hadn't been for her libido. Maybe she'd have been halfway normal. Maybe she'd have been right for Gary, and he'd have been enough for her.

“So,” he cracked his knuckles. “A bed, huh?”

The kitchen bench shuddered and shook, scattering dead bugs and a twisted fork to the tiled floor. It stretched wider, seemed to bulge and settle.

“In a _bedroom_ ,” she said.

Betelgeuse shrugged and grinned. “You're a bit of a mundane fetishist, aren't you, girlie?”

“I'm not a girl, and, what?!” She took some time to process that. She'd never been called normal in her entire life.

“Wanting a bed and all, is all. Normal like a breather. Most people who've crossed over, they get inventive, especially after a few weeks!”

Lydia blamed Adam and Barbara, for her lack of any imagination regarding ghostly sex. They seemed too wholesome, a little too normal. There's no way they'd have used their tricks during sex, right? … Right?! Right. The mental image was just too wrong.

“Who needs a bed, when you can levitate. I see.” She left him in the kitchen with his sorry excuse for a bed, trying to get her head around it. She wondered how inventive and ludicrous things could really get, given some of the dead she'd seen in her life.

He didn't follow her, which was... strange. He seemed like the persistent, creepy kind after all. He'd coerced her into marriage. Barbara had said he'd sexually assaulted her. She'd said she was up for it. She was a little surprised he wasn't grabbing her breasts from behind and making a honk-honk noise.

She really _did_ like the view from the front door. She really _would_ have liked to sit on the porch and watch grey clouds roll across the night sky. There was the occasional truck at night, but no real traffic. No lights on the horizon. Just broad farmland and a starry sky. Skin under moonlight was her favourite. So much gentler than the sun, with all the shadows and shapes of the human body exaggerated and echoed. So low contrast that she'd never been happy with any pictures she'd taken of any of her nudes, at night. It never really did justice.

Lydia rubbed her hands up and down her arms. She shivered, from the thought of the coolness in the breeze. She could still feel the air on her skin, but everything had faded further away. Less real. Whether that was part of the condition of death, or a kind of post-mortem depression, or even the changes in her self that Betelgeuse had hinted at, she couldn't say.

She wanted to feel something soft and warm again. She wanted to forget that she didn't have a heartbeat. She wanted to feel like she was made of living, breathing meat and not something so flimsy that one step forwards could blow her away to Saturn.

When she turned around, he was leaning against the dry peeling paint on the bannister. He had a quiet tired smile on his face, and a kindness in his eyes.

“Don't look at me like that,” she said. She advanced on him, fingertips tingling before she was anywhere near arm's reach. “The last thing I need right now is your pity.”

“Now _that's_ a real pity,” he said. He gave her a short, dark chuckle, but he fell completely silent when he looked in her eyes.

She grabbed him by the arms, feeling her fingers sink into his fat and muscle. He felt radiant, full of heat. Like he had energy to burn. When he swallowed and licked his lips, she could catch the scent of him. Awful breath. She could hear the slick moist sound of his mouth.

She knew if she bit his lip, he'd bleed. He'd feel real. Which would make her feel real. So she pulled him down towards her, and kissed him.

Unlike Gary, who tended to put his hands up and take a step backwards, Betelgeuse groaned and surged forwards. His hands spread, hot and sweaty, against her back. Her shoulders started hurting – and wasn't that funny, because how could her muscles go into anaerobic respiration when she didn't need to _breathe_ – and she let her arms slip upwards, forwards, curling around his neck and running past his rough-skinned jawline, his grimy ears.

Her body understood his, in death, in a way she'd never understood anybody else. The signs of decay were his personal mark of existence. Not imaginary. Not a figment. Real, here, physical. She'd never let herself get quite so ratty, but she could appreciate it, deep down in her gut. In her ankles and knees, as she moved closer.

His stomach was soft, his skin underneath his shirt felt tight and giving compared to her own dry-crackled wrinkling skin. She wondered what he'd make of her, if he ever saw her naked. Wrinkles and moles and cellulite.

“Fuck,” seemed to be the limit of his vocabulary. He hitched her legs up, and she followed his lead, wrapping them around his waist. The move brought her cunt into direct contact with his growing erection, and the seam of the fly of his trousers.

Her skin buzzed as he exerted some of his power to lift them into the air, carrying them the short distance to the wall of the corridor. With firm plaster behind her, and his hot breath on her neck, she wasn't entirely sure how they stripped off enough. All she could remember later was the feeling of hot hands on her lower back, and the welcome slick burn as his cock slid home inside her.

He stilled for a moment, looking down at her like he was trying to read her expression.

“Are you going to move?” She didn't have the patience for this, not for whatever he was thinking about.

He blinked, his eyes cleared and his sweaty palms stuck to her skin as he thrust down and into her. She closed her eyes, closed herself off from the world, and gasped her lips open against what felt like a pulse beating under the skin of his throat.

Afterwards, things were more normal than she'd expected. Lydia curled against him on the floor, feeling real and warm everywhere their skin touched.

“I still hate you,” she muttered.

“I know,” he was just as quiet as she was. Their voices carried in the empty house

“It's just comforting. Touching you doesn't make me feel hollow. Not like touching the living does.”

“I know,” he repeated. He ran a hand down her side. He brushed her hair out of her eyes.

She closed them, shutting him out. She knew she should hate the proprietary gesture, but she felt connected to the world. Her entire body buzzed; sex just wasn't the same by yourself. Sharing it with another person transformed the whole experience, no matter who that person was. She couldn't bring herself to care about what everything might mean when she woke up.

Lydia spent the rest of that week walking down the stairs, cheering for herself every time she managed to step out instead of down; she was teaching herself to hover.

The contractors were a welcome distraction. Lydia sat in the air beside the staircase in the front hall, while Betelgeuse waggled his eyebrows and trailed his fingers along the backs of their necks as they came in the front door.

The electrician was first. He probed into the crumbling old plastic of the outlets, and tapped thoughtfully along the walls. He went outside, and crawled under the house.

“Don't freak him out, unless you want to spend the next few decades without a TV,” Lydia warned Betelgeuse, when he was starting to get clever screwing around with the filaments in the busted incandescent light bulbs.

“Fine, all right. Man, am I whipped!”

“Yeah, you wish,” Lydia said idly. She decided she'd practice sticking her head through walls again, and sank down to ground level, bent over to stick her head through the floor.

She got stuck before her eyeballs even cleared the floorboards. She braced her hands against the smooth old grain of the wood, and heaved.

He would have laughed himself to death, if he wasn't already well past it. She grunted and groaned, and kicked out, hoping to catch his ankles.

“Oh, come on! Like you never had growing pains!”

Large hands reached through the wood and cupped her cheeks, drew her gently upwards. She was never sure if he handled her more carefully when she was experimenting with her powers because he was worried for her, or because he knew she'd kick him in the balls if he hurt her.

She blinked in the sudden brightness of the air, as she finally came free of the floorboards. He kept pulling her up, until she was standing; floating just above the floor, looking up into his face.

“Nope, never. I'm perfect, babe.” He grinned.

She felt something flip over in her stomach. At age fucking forty and then some, after death. Heart leaping into her throat like a little girl. She coughed and turned away to try to cover her blush. “Perfectly annoying, you mean,” she said.

He was showing more insight, more consideration, the longer he lingered in the house beside her. The more often they fucked. It wasn't a great solution, but she couldn't stand how exposed she felt as he watched her without saying a word. He didn't have a great attention span. She didn't want to know what he was thinking about.

She closed her eyes and lowered her hand from her mouth to his crotch. Cupped her palm into the right shape before it even reached his balls. He sighed, pressing his face into her hair. They knew the dance pretty well already. Fade to black, uncomfortable conversations avoided, Lydia's afterlife moved on.

Things kicked up in speed pretty quickly. Delia was an old hat at nagging and harassing people. Otho, her close friend, was an expert at sealing deals with tradesmen. Charles was a professional at getting houses liveable in a hurry at a good price.

When everyone was in the house, all talking and smiling, Betelgeuse retreated somewhere. Maybe the attic? Lydia never saw him. But when they cleared out, for lunch nearby or to their hotel rooms for the night, he came out from the woodwork – sometimes literally – to complain.

“That windowsill was weathered, I tell you! They're doing the place up for a _haunting_ , not a _living_ , fucksake!”

Lydia shrugged, and turned back to her book. “It's the same wood, it's just been sanded and polished to make it last longer. And those beams in the front hall weren't really weathered, so much as eaten.”

He stuck his tongue out at her, and took a swig from a dusty bottle that held either booze, or just murky water. He wouldn't let her near it, so she guessed it was alcoholic. Though she never knew for sure, with him. He'd ransacked one of the pot plants Delia had brought in, for bugs. Like he'd never heard of potting mix, like he thought it'd be just as populated with creepy crawlies as normal garden-variety dirt. He'd probably enjoy drinking contaminated water.

“Nobody's allowed to oil the front door!”

Lydia threw her book at him. “Look! We can always screw things up again after they've fixed them! I'll be here for years, and if you're staying, it'll only take a few for the sun to ruin all the repairs they've made to your precious windowsill! Just... let them grieve for me, okay?”

He caught her book in his free hand, lowering the bottle. “Is that what this is? What a bunch of sentimental turds. And here I thought this was them denying that you'd even gone anywhere.”

“Keep that attitude up, and I'll fill your beer fridge up with sentimental turds. Just fuck off, all right?”

He walked over to her, folded the pages closed over one gritty finger. “Of all things, you're reading this piece of shit?”

The _Handbook_. “I want to find out how to appeal to have my boundaries changed.”

He smirked. “Porch girl.”

“Like you can talk, window boy.” She snatched the book back, and found her place. She wiped the page clean from imaginary crap, and glared at his fingers.

He flipped her the bird, and grinned. “But seriously? Beer fridge? For me? You shouldn't.” He over-acted, saccharine sweet, with a hint of something dark and other in the corners of his smile.

“Don't think that I'm doing it because I care. I'm not. I just don't want your crap getting in the way of my stuff.”

She wasn't going to get _any_ reading done. Not with him around.

“What is it? Do you want to annoy me into giving you a quickie? I'm busy.”

He kicked around in the dust in the room. “Just... it's boring as shit, here.”

“So leave,” she said, “and don't show your face around here until you get me some cigarettes.”

She wouldn't have believed it, but it happened. He looked at her in contemplation, and then he was just gone. She was alone in the house that she haunted, and in the peace and quiet that was finally left to her, she found that she couldn't focus on reading after all.

Delia showed up at eleven thirty the next morning, her laptop full of pictures and her handbag full of catalogues.

“I was thinking, if you like, we can bring up your old furniture from Winter River. Or, we could make a scrapbook of colours and themes, and I could look around antique stores for some bargains.”

Lydia ran her fingers over the catalogues. All new furniture, and well-painted. She'd always preferred things with stories behind them, and Delia knew it. “I'm not as into lace as I used to be,” she said slowly. “But you know me. Anything old, anything black or made with natural materials.”

Delia inclined her head. “Anything with spiders on it, anything that says Bela Lugosi or Robert Smith.”

When had Delia's cruel sarcasm become something that felt like fondness and understanding? Lydia smirked, and ducked her head to hide the surprise in her eyes as she laughed. “Yeah. Less Lugosi, these days. I posted some prints and art to Winter River when I was planning my trip. Do you think you could get them sent here?”

Delia laughed back. “Sure. I'll even throw some of my own art in.” She raised an eyebrow in well-intentioned challenge, just waiting for Lydia to act like normal. Tell her she'd rather be caught dead than with one of Delia's sculptures in the hall.

“When did we become family,” Lydia whispered with wonder. Never mind. Didn't want Delia getting emotional, that way lay tears and WAY too much hugging, and the popping of pills. Louder, quickly, she said, “Actually, if you have any of the sculptures you made right after my _first_ wedding. You know, in the red dress?”

Delia froze, then snorted. “Trust you to be morbid even in death. It's still not safe to say that name?”

Lydia honestly didn't know. If their wedding had been valid all along, did that mean that Betelgeuse's paperwork would go through? Would he count as a free spirit? “I don't know, but let's not risk it, right now.”

Did it count as a summons or a banishment, if the ghost had left your house of their own free will, before you said their name? Lydia was getting a strong appreciation for how technical and pedantic some of the sections in the Handbook were. You really couldn't fudge some of these things, and having an appointment for every single question was just a waste of time. Not that she'd had any. She'd never even met her case worker.

“Well, I've got the snake head, Charles loves that one, though. Oh, and that installation! You know, the one with the hoses!”

Delia had tried to recreate Betelgeuse's inflating hammer-hands with rubber balloons and a high-pressure hose, in an art gallery. They generally didn't talk about that day, ever.

“Let's not go with that one.” Too messy, too embarassing, and too much of a compliment to Betelgeuse's already healthy ego.

“Hmm. How about the wedding portrait! It's a bit wrong, but you have just gone through a divorce. Maybe it will help?”

Lydia smirked, again. What was it with Delia, and knowing all the right things to make her smile? She was _sure_ they hadn't gotten along this well before she'd died. “Maybe. A reminder of what happens to me, when I tie the knot?”

Delia grinned. “Trust me, sometimes with Charles, I wish I had tied a knot around his neck, instead of taking his name. Don't get me wrong, I love the man...”

Lydia knew her father. “But if he tells either of us we'll be happy if we just sit down and fold the ironing, we'll kill him.”

Most of the days passed in silence, Lydia sitting in the air near the rafters, floating confused spiders around on their silk strings and watching the contractors working down below in the house. Black and grey tiles. A tall armchair, re-upholstered in striped dark chocolate brown. Hooks in the wall for the prints and paintings that would hang there. Pots, pans, crockery and cutlery. Toilet paper in the toilets, and toothpaste and shampoo in the bathrooms.

Lydia's Dad put down the last can of vegetable soup in the pantry. Delia slipped Lydia a flask of alcohol, like it was contraband and she was doing Lydia a favour. They hugged, and waved, and they shut the porch door behind themselves, leaving Lydia locked alone in a clean house that was done up just the way she liked it.

One week later, the art arrived. It sat in a box on the porch, just out of reach, with a courier's label on the side facing out onto the highway. Lydia couldn't make out the logo. It cast an awkward postmodern shadow across the oiled and solid wood, that turned back on the house and faded into nothing as the sun set.

Ghosts didn't menstruate. Lydia frowned at her underpants, wondering if she really missed the slipping wet warmth of overnight pads, or if it was just close enough to sex-slickness. If she wanted to be alive with all her normal bodily functions, or just screwing her brains out with Betelgeuse, forgetting that she was dead.

She hadn't realised she had still been waiting for him, until she gave up on him. Walking past the laundry, Lydia stepped in and grabbed a broom. She turned on her heel when she neared the sitting room, and doubled back to get the mop for good measure. The package was close enough to the window, and the window was close enough to the front door, that it only took a few hours of heaving and careful poking, to shift the box a few inches forwards. She was going to do this herself, or not at all.

The next trick, was opening it without damaging the art. Momentum. She had to trust in momentum. She didn't have time to practice, in case it rained. She took a sharp knife from the kitchen, and spun it around her head a few times to make sure she'd got the whole levitation thing down to a fine art.

She aimed, and sent the knife straight at the package. It hit home with a thunk, point quivering in the thick cardboard. The blade quivered and wobbled, and Lydia could almost feel her ear wax melting out her ears as her world narrowed to the space between the blade and the board.

Her fingers went numb. Her hairline tickled, and she was possibly sweating, though she hadn't thought it possible in her state.

She managed to pry the tape off, get the top open that night. She had to rest before she tried anything else. She watched the sky through her bedroom window. No clouds.

The next step, what should have been the first step really, was to get some ropes. But she hadn't really planned it, what she'd do with the knife after she'd thrown it out there. She hadn't known she could manipulate things that were outside of her threshold until it had happened.

She stretched a hand out, as she threw the rope towards the box. It was more of a stretch to move things outside of her field of vision, but she kind of managed it. She kept her arm up, in case it helped, as she watched the ropes slowly but surely twist and wind around the box. She gathered everything in her, from her head to her gut, and pulled. It felt like hitting a brick wall. She'd never exerted herself quite as much before, and it was showing. Her head ached.

She'd wanted it to fall towards her. It just rocked, a little, and fell back onto its base. Lydia fell, too, forwards. Out through the door, onto the wooden boards. The world went black.

When she woke up, she realised that she wasn't lying in the sand, or inside a sandworm, and that she'd passed the threshold. She pressed her cheek into the wood of the porch, not through it. Feeling it all on her skin. The smell of the morning dew and the breeze.

Her eyes were wet. She was crying. She pulled herself up using the corner of the box, and wiped at her cheeks with her fingers.

Right. Because you had to appeal to the Department, to extend your threshold. Someone had appealed on her behalf, and that someone hadn't been the Maitlands, because they'd used up all their vouchers to attend Lydia's college graduation, and they hadn't gotten their hands on any more.

Betelgeus. She didn't whisper the name. But she knew he wouldn't be coming back. She could have just stepped out onto the porch, instead of screwing around with the knife. Did it count as shame, if you were the only person to witness your own embarrassment?

She could always try and call her Dad, or Delia. Barbara, or Adam. She could haunt Gary, she supposed, if she could get the phone to work.

She wanted a fucking smoke. She slid the doorstop in under the screen door, and walked inside. The frames slid easily up and levitated out, manoeuvred through the door. It was amazing how effortless it all was, when the outcome didn't matter to her. Bubble wrap off. Styrofoam corners off. Paper wrapping off. Airborne and weightless, she moved it all through the air with barely a thought. The black and white picture of Central Park on a rainy day went to the guest bedroom. Graffiti from downtown LA went in the sitting room, and the graveyard from the Winter River chapel.

The Winter River Tryptich, the house before, during, and after the redecoration and dedecoration went in the first floor hallway. The empty buildings from Chicago went in the kitchen, because she'd kept them small and intimate, cropped to hone in on one person's touch on the urban ruins. One tag, one abandoned bed, one broken window. They made her feel cosy.

She left some things in the guest room on the floor, wasn't sure where to put them. But Delia's picture went in the front hall, on the wall facing the door. Lydia, standing tall and smirking, facing the viewer instead of the celebrant. It was all wrong if you wanted to document history. But that hadn't been what Delia had been going for. Lydia liked it. The way that the sandworm took up most of the picture, oil paint thick with texture. The little hand grasping in agony sticking out between sharp teeth.

“I'm a sentimental idiot,” she told herself, but it was the first time she'd smiled that day, so she let it pass. It didn't matter, because he wasn't coming back. There were better things to be getting on with.

“You're a twisted freak, that's what you are.” He hung an arm over her shoulder, wiggled a pack of cigarettes in front of her. “Did baby miss me?”

She had things to say to him, but half of them led to a certain screaming match and the other half led to revealing way too much. He wasn't the kind of guy that you wanted to give any advantage to. She hadn't fucked him for a very long time. She didn't think about the turning point between fucking _anyone_ and fucking _Betelgeuse_ specifically. She just grabbed his hand around the box of cigarettes and squeezed until it crushed in his fist, inhaling the memory of tobacco and the comforting dry curl of smoke into the sky on a dark night.

She pulled until he stepped flush against her back, until he felt warm against her. And because he was him, that was enough for his hand to find its way to her hip and his lips to her neck. He was chuckling and confident, like the asshole he was. But he was right, he was going to get some, so did it even matter if he'd have thought the same thing if she was screaming and running from him? If she was using him, did that make it okay for him to be a jackass?

He tasted sour when she kissed his lips. He smelled of sweat, like he hadn't bathed the whole time he'd been away. She was turning to press close against him, and he was shoving her top up her back, fingers scrabbling on skin.

“Oh, _babe_ ,” he groaned, he sounded breathless. Like he was praying. “I missed you, I missed you, you crazy bitch.”

Lydia made a kind of mmm sound, hoped he took that to mean whatever he wanted. Ran the tip of her tongue along the underside of his own, just to hear him moan like he was dying. He pulled back on reflex, and she rose in his arms and followed his lips back down, letting him strip her top off as she chased his tongue.

She was clinging to him more tightly. She was trying to fuck, but it was like he couldn't control himself. He dragged his hands over her slowly, took deep lungfuls of breaths of her. He pressed his cheek against her breastbone like she was precious, and when she looked down at him, he was looking back up at her instead of down at her tits.

“Are we going to do this here?” Not what she'd meant to say. Are we going to fuck or not, that's what she'd been going to say. It came out more tender than she wanted.

He smiled, and raised an eyebrow to the stairs. “After you,” he said. 

Lydia couldn't step away, so she pushed him backwards. He fell against the wall with his arms spread, like surrender? Like an open embrace? Whatever it was, he was right. They'd be lucky enough to make it to the floor, let alone the bedroom.

She mimicked him, let her body pretend to understand what was going on, ignored her brain. Kissed the not-so-hollow of his neck and ran her fingertips down the inside of his arms as she chased his sleeves off the ends of his hands. She felt her hands shaking as she unhitched his belt, unbuckled his fly. Wives did that. People who loved other people did that. No, no thinking.

She sucked on his nipple to make him inhale, to make him close his eyes and take them off of her. The way his hand rose to clutch at her head, light and gentle and almost like it wasn't about sex at all, shook her knees. She pressed against him, rubbed her mons over his rising cock, helped his free hand shove her skirt and panties down so that she could brace a knee against the wall beside him and awkwardly fit him in.

He didn't find his way in, the first time. She still gasped, too caught up in the feeling of his cockhead sliding over her clit to care that much. He laughed, and slipped a hand between them to hold the base of his cock steady and then she was up, over, and too full. Too tight.

“Hey, hang on, you can-”

She didn't wait, the pain was part of it. Stretching and whole and real. His skin was hot and tight over his belly, and his hand pulled out awkwardly from between them, to settle on her hip. She rolled against him, deeper onto him, until there was nothing left of her but the rising swell between her thighs, the in and out of her breath, and the strange way that they seemed to synchronise even though they didn't have a single heartbeat between the two of them.

“Yessss,” he hissed. He moved his hand to cup her face, pressed light kisses along her hairline. “Oh fuck, Lyds. Darling. Baby. Fuck. Fuck!”

The tenderest words anyone had ever said to her, for sure. She shook his gentleness aside, bit down slowly on his earlobe so that it had to hurt him.

“Oh!” He stiffened, held her tight, and came with his lips pressed to her temple and his breath hot across her face.

She faked it. She didn't really feel able to come. She felt like a guest in somebody else's melodrama. She had all these pieces, but she hadn't put them together properly. She felt like a passenger, watching it all happen from a great distance.

He eased down into the lounge with her, legs flung over one arm and his head pillowed on his arm. She settled on the cushion next to him, her back against his side, kicking her panties free of her ankle and leaning back against his softness and his warmth.

“I take it you found the porch, huh?”

“Thanks for filing the paperwork for me,” she said. “And for the cigarettes.”

He grinned. “A gentleman never forgets the smokes! And a real lady never forgets to pack the wedding portrait!”

He poked her in the side, playful, and she batted his hand away. “I didn't think you'd be back to see it.”

“Oh. Oh, shit.” He sat up, hands rising to cup her shoulders. “Sounds like you need that smoke right now. You said I could stay, if I wanted. You're my fucking _wife_.”

He had a lot of unspoken things tied up in that word. She twisted the ring around on her finger. “That doesn't have to mean anything and you know it.”

“Yeah,” he let go of her, lying back and crossing his arms behind his head. He could see right through her, and it was starting to make her happy, not irritated.

“I'd get bored without somebody here to fight with,” she said, fitting herself against his side, laying her head on his shoulder. “I can see why those that can haunt, do.”

He grunted, and snapped his fingers, passed her a lit cigarette and took one for himself, out of thin air. “Maybe in a few years, hey? I've wasted enough of this honeymoon sitting in dark halls waiting for papers to get signed.”

“Honeymoon,” Lydia said, hoping he didn't take that to mean the entire duration of her restrictions. One hundred and twenty five years with his morning breath.

“Oh, I've got them all for you! Paperwork. Lemme see.” He waved and his pockets in the front hall began emptying themselves. Papers floated into view. “We've got a marriage certificate, the updated council approved plans of the house _including_ a porch, the free counselling vouchers from the wedding registry, and here we go! The joint passport.”

“Passport,” Lydia said.

“Does what it says. Lets me – and you cos we're hitched now – walk freely. Have to have it on you, this is still technically your main residence. I've got to say, I didn't think we'd pull it off this way, but fuck it beats staying put here. Not that I'm complaining, like the place. You've got some good cobwebs starting in the right corners. But I was thinking, for the honeymoon. Vegas?”

“Vegas,” Lydia said. She stared at the papers in her hands. “Or I could go visit Barbara and Adam.”

“Yeah, not so sold on that,” he said. “Walls are thin, even if it's a nice old house. Bit crowded full of disapproving in-laws.” He picked some greenish wax out of his ear, and flicked it onto the floor.

“We could go haunt my ex,” she said. “I'd like to haunt somebody.”

Betelgeuse groaned, and put a hand over his face. “Way to make a guy insecure. You are one crazy bitch.”

“Right, like you'd actually be-” She'd turned enough to see his eyes, and she felt like she'd been punched in the gut. He actually would be, jealous or insecure. He actually felt something for her.

“You know I would,” he said with a grin. “Aw shucks, you're just testing me. Okay. Not Vegas. How about New Orleans? I hear there's some great parties there.”

“I'm not really a party person,” Lydia said. Was she really going to do this? Just slide into it all, without having an actual conversation? It was taking the easy, slimy way out.

He sat up a bit, and wrapped his arms around her. She relaxed back into his chest. Okay, fine, she was taking the easy way out. She'd deal with the rest of it another time. He'd been gone forever less than an hour before, as far as she'd known. She was allowed to coast for a while.

“Well, we can think about it. Don't have to decide right away. Now, I was going to ask for a tour, but now's probably not the time.”

It was hard to coast, with him, wasn't it? “What's that supposed to mean?” Something was curling loose in her, something that had chased her from the crib in the hospital, with her mother's skin turning grey on the operating table.

“Just, you're not doing great.”

She stood up, wrapped her arms around herself. “I get it, okay. I'm an easy lay and you don't hate me, and you've hit the freedom big-time thanks to signing some papers with my name on them. But don't... don't act like you're going to hang around.”

She could hear him shifting, standing behind her. “You said I could,” he said thoughtfully.

“I'm not stupid enough to think that anyone stays forever,” she bit out sharply. She wished she hadn't, as soon as she'd said it. She felt like she'd revealed too much, shown him precisely the perfect way to hurt her.

Even if it was true. Even when people were still around, like her Dad, they left you for work, for other people. Nobody stayed forever. Lydia hadn't been able to stay for Gary, even if she'd meant to in the beginning.

“My mother,” Betelgeuse said, his voice sounding small, his throat tight, “Her friend visited her. Coughed up blood. My mother knew what had happened. She locked the door. She told me it was for my own good, I was to walk out of our town and never look back. I had no money. I had no coat. The death was everywhere, there was nowhere to go that was safe.”

“Oh god,” Lydia said. Barbara had mentioned something about that. Lived through the plague. Fuck. She knew she should be feeling something for him, but there was something angry in her chest. Like her pain was being belittled, mocked, because she wasn't the only person out there to feel abandoned and alone.

Like she was losing something, becoming less alone. Like she'd suffered alone for an an entire lifetime, when maybe there had been other living people out there she could have found to share that with.

“I thought about you, the whole time I was gone.” He sounded ragged.

Maybe they hadn't all been living, after all.

“I know,” she said. Her fingernails cut painfully into her arms. “Look, you'll like what we did to the bedrooms.”

He took the hint, brushing his hands through his hair. A flash of air over her body, and she was dressed and whole again, as if he'd never laid a hand on her. Every hair in place. It made her shudder.

He walked upstairs, shut the doors behind himself as he went. Lydia sat on her haunches and pressed her head against her knees, biting the inside of her cheek as she cried.

She went to wash her face, when she was done. She didn't like how normal she looked, so she scrubbed her fingers through the base of her bangs, and ran her hands over the top of her head. She wanted to look lived in.

She found him in the kitchen, boiling the kettle. He snatched his hand back from the handle like he'd been caught doing something wrong.

“You're like me,” she said. “Nobody's like me.”

He shrugged. “Heaps of people are. Our type, we just play our cards close to our chest.”

“Maybe.” She took the mug when he gave it to her, held the tea close to her body, just under her chin, so she could feel the steam coming off of it.

“Well, if you think it's just you and me, I'm not going to complain. Shall we?”

He offered her the crook of his arm, and nodded out the window to the garden beyond.

“I'm...” there was a cost to stepping over that threshold. She wasn't sure if she could bear it. “I'd rather focus on portraits, today.”

It took him a few to figure it out. She watched him over her mug, lips hidden behind sweetness and warm milk.

“Hey, hang on a sec.”

Lydia ducked her head, looked away. Chased the last dregs of hot chocolate down her throat with a lick of her lips. “It's not like you'll be in them when they develop,” she pointed out.

“Eh, yeah,” he smiled at her fondly. It looked natural on him, and when she headed to the front hall, to the stairs, he followed at her heels. “Shame to leave this place now anyway, when it's been done up so nicely for us and all.”

“We should at least stay until the windowsills are all dry and warping again,” she agreed.

She settled her new camera around her neck, and barely noticed the click of her wedding ring against the matte black cover of the lens as she got things ready. When she looked out the window, she could see across the flat grassland and farms. If she truly had centuries ahead of herself, she could get to know the entire world as well as the view outside of her house.

She turned to find Betelgeuse posed like a pinup star, leg propped up against the doorjamb.

“Not a good look for you,” she said. She raised the viewfinder to her eye and snapped a picture anyway.

He pouted, which made her shoulders shake from laughter. She had to let the camera rest on its strap, in order to give him the shove he deserved.

He stumbled backwards, grinning, arms spread out. “Come on, I'm a centrefold. Admit it.”

“Not for any magazines I've ever been published in.” She followed him through the doorway, and into the rest of her afterlife.


End file.
